Join us at Mason Exhibitions Arlington on Thursday, May 1, 6-8pm!
Current Arlington County Poet Laureate Courtney LeBlanc and Poets Laureate Emeritae Katherine E. Young and Holly Karapetkova read their work and discuss the role of the Poet Laureate in building community through the literary arts.
Holly Karapetkova is Poet Laureate Emerita of Arlington County and the recipient of a 2022 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship. Her most recent book of poetry, Dear Empire, was co-winner of the 2024 Barry Spacks Poetry Prize and winner of the 2024 Willliam Meredith Poetry Award and was published by Gunpowder Press.
Book Synopsis:
Dear Empire is co-winner of the 2024 Barry Spacks Poetry Prize and winner of the 2024 William Meredith Prize for Poetry. The poems in this collection offer an unflinching look at the Empire in which we all dwell. Karapetkova writes with a passionate, urgent voice, compelled to call out injustice wherever she sees it, tackling issues of race, white supremacy, and other forms of personal and historical empire. More information (including blurbs) located here: https://gunpowderpress.com/product/dear-empire-poems-by-holly-karapetkova/
Katherine E. Young is the author of Woman Drinking Absinthe and Day of the Border Guards (2014 Miller Williams Arkansas Poetry Prize finalist) and editor of Written in Arlington. She translates poetry and prose by Russian-language writers from Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine. She served as the inaugural Poet Laureate for Arlington, Virginia (2016-2018).
Book synopsis:
People and Trees by Akram Aylisli, translated by Katherine E. Young (Plamen Press, 2024)
Set in the mountains of Azerbaijan just after World War II, Akram Aylisli’s People and Trees chronicles the wrenching transformation of traditional Azeri society under Soviet rule. Private land is collectivized; mosques are converted to silk factories or bulldozed to build “palaces of culture.” The young narrator, Sadyk, fantasizes about striding hand-in-hand with a beautiful girl into the bright, socialist future he’s seen on the movie screen. The village women, meanwhile, navigate religious, economic, and social upheaval, including famine and the loss of an entire generation of men to war. Drawing on the rich folklore traditions of the Caucasus mountains, this timeless collection of “tales” is the work that put Azerbaijan’s greatest living author on the international literary map.
Courtney LeBlanc is the author of four full-length collections, most recently, Her Dark Everything. She is the Arlington County Poet Laureate and founder and editor-in-chief of Riot in Your Throat, an independent poetry press. She loves nail polish, tattoos, and a soy latte each morning. Find her online at www.courtneyleblanc.com.
Book synopsis:
Her Dark Everything by Courtney LeBlanc: Part elegy to a friend who died by suicide, part love poem to a friend who continues to survive, Her Dark Everything is a collection that will pull you through the darkest depths until you feel the light against your skin. It will make you grieve for who have lost the battle against the beast that is depression while simultaneously making your grateful for those who stay and fight. In equal measures dark and light, soft and sharp, Her Dark Everything will roost in your heart permanently.
